[Beowulf] SSD prices

[Jeff Layton]

Greg Lindahl wrote:
> I was recently surprised to learn that SSD prices are down in the
> $2-$3 per gbyte range. I did a survey of one brand (OCZ) at NexTag
> and it was:
>
> 256 gigs = $700
> 128 gigs =  300
>  64 gigs =  180
>  32 gigs =   70
>
> Also, Micron is saying that they're going to get into the business of
> PCIe-attached flash, which will give us a second source for what
> Fusion-io is shipping today.
>
> If you're on the "I like a real system disk" side of the
> diskless/diskfull fence, these SSDs ought to be a lot more reliable
> than tradtional disks. And I'd like to get rid of the mirrored
> disks in our developer desktops...
>   

Remember that OCZ does not equal Fusion-IO :) There are many
factors that go into an SSD that determine performance. So the
performance of OCZ is not nearly that of Fusion-IO's product.

For example, I've been tracking some performance testing of a
wide variety of SSD's and spinning disks in my day job. Some of
the SSD's are fairly inexpensive, but the performance is pretty
pathetic. For example, if your read/write mix includes more than
about 10% writes, then the performance of the SSD's is worse
than a spinning disk (this is in terms of IOPS).

If you want to move up the food chain and buy some unbelievably
fast SSD's you get can get the performance above spinning disks
but the price is several orders of magnitude greater than spinning
disks.

Reliability is another question and I posted a quick response to
this list in a different email.

Jeff